ASilverMirror (9 page)

“But I do not like my crespines to hang halfway down my
back,” she said, “and they would if you made them longer. For now, plait my
hair and wind it around my head.”

“Plait it,” Clotilde grumbled merrily, “as well plait ten
hanks of yarn. Why does the good Lord put all the hair in the world on one
person’s head? Could He not spread it about? I can think of ten ladies who
would benefit from a handful or two, and a few who would like to pull it out
themselves.”

“What? Already?” Barbara exclaimed, alert to Clotilde’s
oblique hints. “I cannot have offended anyone yet.”

“Were you not in the queen’s hall this afternoon with two
handsome and richly dressed young men?” Clotilde asked. “Did you not ignore the
ladies there and fail to join them? And did not Alphonse d’Aix, Queen Eleanor’s
own nephew, ask for you when he came from her chamber and set out to find you
without even nodding to the other ladies? Do you call that being inoffensive?”

Barbara groaned slightly and shook her head without
bothering to answer. She had forgotten that any gentlewoman in the hall might
know Alphonse because of Queen Eleanor’s long stay at the French court. And the
maid was right to warn her. Gossip was Clotilde’s specialty. She gathered it
and passed it with equal assiduity and both were often of great value to
Barbara. In fact, the maid was invaluable in many ways, for she was brave,
strong, and clever—and heart and soul Barbara’s own with no ties or loyalties
to any other person. When she reminded Barbara of Alphonse, however, Clotilde’s
company became painful. Barbara had suddenly remembered that the maid had been
another gift from Alphonse. She waited impatiently for Clotilde to finish
pinning a fresh fillet over her hair, pushed the silver mirror into her hands,
and walked swiftly toward the stairs.

The servant who had come with Barbara to France in 1253 had
been her nurse, an old woman and very unhappy in her new environment. Her fear
and grief at being parted from her family had added to Barbara’s misery. How he
had discovered it Barbara never found out, but one day Alphonse had brought
Clotilde, only a few years older than Barbara but far wiser in the ways of the
world, lively and laughing and eager to serve a young lady at court. As soon as
Barbara had grown accustomed to Clotilde, he had arranged for the old woman to
go back to England and her children.

The memory of that kindness made Barbara feel more guilty
about binding Alphonse to a marriage he had not really sought. She knew she
must not even consider trying to make him change his way of life. Then there
was only the choice of releasing him from his request to marry her or living
with the knowledge that she would share him with other women.

Sickness and fury churned so strongly in Barbara that she
paused at the foot of the stairs she had descended. For a moment she looked
sightlessly out over the hall, which took up almost the whole lower floor of
the house. Servants passed to and fro, but Barbara was so accustomed to their
presence and their many activities that she regarded them no more than she did
the stools and benches standing here and there.

A high and delicate titter of laughter—no servant’s voice
that—finally drew Barbara’s eyes toward the open window at the far end of the
room. There sat the ladies, grouped around Princess Eleanor. Among them,
Barbara knew, were several, quite placid and contented, whose husbands were
well known to seek entertainment abroad. Perhaps some hid suffering, but just
as many, Barbara was sure, were well pleased to be relieved of marital
attentions they found distasteful.

Perhaps theirs was the wiser way, Barbara thought. Look at
poor Eleanor, who adored her husband with good reason, for Edward was gentle
and loving to her and very faithful. Her face was pale and drawn and her eyes
dark ringed, although her lips were curved into the form of a smile and she
nodded now and again to remarks made to her. Barbara’s mind flashed back to
Joanna, to the pain and anxiety she suffered since her relationship with Hugh had
changed. Perhaps it was worse to love one’s husband than not to love him.

“You do look better, Lady Barbara,” a sharp voice called.
“When you came in your disarray gave me some very strange ideas.”

Barbara started forward toward the ladies, smiling sweetly
at Lady Jeanne, who belonged to the French queen’s household. Another attack on
her reputation demanded all of Barbara’s attention and left no room for musing
on subjects that sent shivers over her skin. She blessed Clotilde, too, for
having warned her about the jealousy among the ladies. Somewhere inside her she
had been making ready, half expecting trouble. A few of the women, like Lady
Ela seated to the left of the princess, her gaze fixed on nothing and her hands
idle in her lap, had a real cause to be bitter. Lacking a better outlet for
their fear for their menfolk, who had fought for the king, such a woman might
feel a desire to torment the daughter of Leicester’s ally. But Lady Jeanne
simply enjoyed pricking a victim. Barbara did not mind at all. She was an
expert at knife-play with sharp words.

“Your ideas could not have been as strange as the true
reason, Lady Jeanne,” she said merrily as she paused just beyond the seated
women. “My mare, who has a playful disposition, snatched my fillet from my head
and my crespine with it.”

“No, no,” Lady Jeanne said, “you cannot get away with that
excuse. I saw you come in from riding earlier.”

“Yes.” Seeing the sudden tension in the way Princess Eleanor
looked at her, Barbara recalled that she might be thought to have carried back
a message from Hugh Bigod. “I came with John of Hurley, my Uncle Hugh’s man.
Sir Hugh needed more time to study the message sent by Queen Eleanor, and John
had come with news from Comte Raymond d’Aix. I went back to the stable yard after
John was taken to the queen to see that Frivole had been properly cared for.”

“Do you not trust Queen Marguerite’s servants to tend your
horse?” another French lady asked indignantly.

“She does not trust any servants, even her own, about the
care of her mare.” Princess Eleanor spoke more sharply than usual.

The princess was indifferent to the implication that Barbara
had been disheveled in a sexual encounter. For one thing, Princess Eleanor was
not fond of malicious gossip. For another, she had known Barbara for a long
time and was certain she would never have run through the hall as she had if
her condition had anything to do with a man. More important, the princess had
questions she wanted answered. She had lived in courts all her life, however,
and she spent one sentence to placate Lady Jeanne, because she was aware of the
need to be particularly gracious to ladies sent to attend her by the French
queen, who was her hostess.

“Lady Barbara is famous—or is it infamous?—for cosseting her
animals,” the princess said, trying to smile.

Although the princess had supported her statement, Barbara
was aware that the purpose was not to save her but to cut off further remarks
on a subject in which Princess Eleanor was not interested. And her expression,
when she looked at Barbara, held reproach for Barbara’s long delay in coming to
her.

Barbara dropped a curtsy and seated herself on a bench near
the princess at which Eleanor had gestured. “I am sorry, madam, I do not know
what news John of Hurley brought,” she said, answering the expression rather
than the words. “He was so anxious about his father-by-law, who had been taken
prisoner with Richard of Cornwall, and asked me so many questions about Sir
William, whom I had seen in London, that he gave me no chance to ask what news
he brought from Aix. And I am not sure he would have told me if I did ask,
partly because I am a woman but also because of my father’s alliance with
Leicester. But I am sure, madam, that Lord Raymond d’Aix will do what he can to
help Queen Eleanor.”

“But
what
will he do?” the princess murmured, her
eyes filling with tears. “King Henry’s letter threatens Leicester will hurt my
darling Edward if Queen Eleanor does not stop gathering men for an invasion of
England. Will Lord Raymond bring an army?”

“No one will hurt Prince Edward,” Barbara said, not for the
first or, she expected, the last time. “I swear to you that my father would
never countenance that—nor would anyone else, not even Leicester himself. I do
not know how King Henry came by such a notion. Madam, you know I saw the prince
in London myself, well and strong, at several sessions of the court before I
sailed for France. He was guarded, yes, but not chained, and he was treated
with honor.”

“Do
you
favor an invasion?” Lady Jeanne asked cynically.

“No, of course not,” Barbara replied, a flick of her brows
expressing her disdain for so cruel and clumsy a question. “How could I favor
what would endanger my father and my uncle both?” she asked. And then added,
“Besides, I am certain that King Louis will find a way to reconcile the parties
if only both will have a little patience.”

“Reconcile?” Lady Ela echoed, pricked out of apathy by
indignation. “You would like that, would you not? Are we, who are loyal to King
Henry, to have no recompense for the ill done us? My house in London was
burned. My husband lies wounded in prison. Great harm has been done to all
those who fought for what is right.”

Aware that her own family had lost little, Barbara could not
be pert. She shook her head and looked down. “There has been hurt on both
sides,” she said. “It is my hope and my comfort that King Louis will find a
middle path that will avoid further war.”

“War is terrible, terrible,” the princess said, and stood
up. “Pray pardon me. My babe was fretful this morning. I must go and see that
she is well.”

Barbara’s heart sank right into the suddenly hollow pit of
her stomach. More than half of all babies born died before their second year,
but for this babe to sicken now, after Princess Eleanor had been driven from Windsor
where the child had been healthy, would be another blow, almost certainly
fatal, to the frail hope of peace. If the infant died, the harsh treatment
Princess Eleanor had received would be blamed. Neither Eleanor nor Edward,
whose ferocity could be frightening and whose memory for injury was very long,
would ever forgive the death of their first-born child. Then Barbara drew a
deep breath. She had seen the baby herself after dinner. The child had been
crowing happily then, and Eleanor’s face had been free of strain until Barbara
had recalled her to present troubles. Likely, Barbara thought, Eleanor had gone
to her baby in search of comfort rather than out of anxiety.

The idea immediately brought Alphonse back to her mind
because he was the only man she associated with marriage, and children could
only be had, as far as Barbara was concerned, within marriage. She sat staring
at the chair from which Eleanor had risen, paying no attention to a voice in
the background, until a Frenchwoman prodded her.

“Lady Barbara, do you not hear Lady Jeanne ask how your mare
gained so strong a hold on your affection?”

Barbara swept her eyes over the company and allowed her
mobile mouth to twist in distaste. “I am fond of my mare because she does not
ask me stupid questions. My country is at war with itself, a princess I love is
suffering, and you think my love for a horse is of grave importance?” She
sighed. “I am not in the mood to play your games, Lady Jeanne. I will say this
and no more. I am not a stupid woman and I do not have a lover. If I did,
however, and tumbling him had caused my disarray, I assure you I would have
managed to find a private place to set myself to rights rather than run through
the hall where all could see me.”

There was a shocked silence, which was broken by a brief
chuckle from Lady Ela. “I think you must be greatly distressed by something,”
she said. “It is not at all like you, Barbara, to apply a bludgeon when you
could draw blood with a poniard. Do not lose your sense of humor. You may have need
of it.” And then she turned away deliberately to speak to another.

Barbara did not hear more than the words addressed to her.
It was most excellent advice, she thought, and though she knew it was almost a
threat on the political level, coming from the source it did, she sincerely
wished she knew a way to take it on the personal level. Whether she released
Alphonse and thus lost all chance of him forever or kept him to his unwilling
offer and looked forward to a life of ignoring his mistresses and remarks about
them from such kind ladies as Lady Jeanne, she would certainly need her sense
of humor. Surely it would be better to release him, she thought. She would thus
save herself the agonies of jealousy and of fear for any danger he might face.

Even as the logical ideas formed in her mind, she was struck
by a pang of loss and came to a startling conclusion. She had not been as
content as she told herself she was during her years in England. She had been
empty and wanting. Only now when she had seen Alphonse again and felt all of
herself alive and awake did she realize what she had been lacking. And if she
did not fill that emptiness now—her skin grew cold—it would be in her forever.

To have him, even partly, and to have his children, surely
that was worth suffering the green fever. If she kept the peace, if she did not
rail at him for playing with other women, surely he would grow to love her, to
depend on her. But what if he did not? What if he sent her to Aix to be out of
his way? No, she could bargain about that, and anyhow, if they could not live
together, if she found it too hard to bear his unfaithfulness, she could always
go back to her father in England. So she would keep him to the offer he had
made. At least she could sip some of the honey of that beautiful mouth and play
with the curls in his private places, which must be even blacker and glossier
than those on his head. Unless he was so furious with her for tricking him into
a proposal that he would not even consummate the marriage. No, that was silly.
Why should he leave lying what was freely offered and would cost him nothing?